


Taking Measurements

by TheMouthKing



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Blindfolds, First Time, M/M, Olfactophilia, Scent Kink, Underwear Kink, the mere suggestion of a blowjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 00:34:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMouthKing/pseuds/TheMouthKing
Summary: Link's always talking about howhe re-wears his underwear. He thinks that because of his toilet and his fastidious cleanliness, he's cleaner down there than anywhere else and doesn't need to change his underwear that often. Rhett disagrees. They put it to the test.





	Taking Measurements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisiscyrene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiscyrene/gifts).



> A big thank you to my master beta, thisiscyrene/killthenaughtyboy of tumblr. Without her, this fic wouldn’t be nearly so filthy. :D

Rhett’s not wholly sure how they got here. 

He’d like to say that anyway. The truth of the matter is he knows exactly how he’d found himself here, sitting on one end of their office sofa while Link’s getting everything ready in the studio bathroom. Slipping back into their office, the ziplock bags he has tucked under his arm crinkling as he turns to lock them door. It’s late in the day and they’re alone in the office, and furthermore they’re not doing anything wrong, but instinctually Link wants to be sure they’re not interrupted because he knows damn well how it’ll look. Link knows, too, that the intentions he’s got aren’t pure. 

Unknown to Link, Rhett’s relieved when he hears the lock click into place for the same reasons Link had locked it. 

“Alright brother, I’m all set up, you got the blindfold?” Link asks. As he turns he can see the answer before Rhett can manage to speak, sees Rhett turning the green and white felt blindfold over in his big hands nervously. 

Rhett doesn’t speak, just gestures with the blindfold and nods.

“Well, put it on. Don’t want you cheating.”

Link hasn’t even crossed the room yet. Rhett’s eyeing him and the bags he’s holding tucked under his arm against his chest, catching sight of the bright patterned fabrics inside. He knows it won’t do a lick of good to get a good look when it comes to sniffing out his answer, and he knows Link’s got the exact same patterns as he has, but he can’t help himself.

“Hey man, quit eyeballin’ my undies,” Link chides him, voice hard as he snaps his fingers twice and points at him, disapproving and commanding him to obey all at once. 

He hasn’t even done much of anything and Rhett feels himself go warm already. _How on earth_ is this partembarrassing _?_ And yet here he is, not yet started and already pink in his ears. After that, following through with the blindfold was an easy move, afforded him a measure of privacy in his shame.

This was stupid, the whole thing. Telling Link he knew damn well that no matter how clean he thought he kept himself _down there_ that there’s no way on god’s green earth his underwear are fine for four days, challenging him on it when he’d gotten pushback until somehow he’d agreed to prove it by smell testing them. Blindfolded. 

“What’re the rules?” Rhett asks, his nervousness obvious in his voice, pitched up a little higher. He’s slightly slouched on the sofa, elbows planted against his knees, hands folded together. In moments he’s feeling uncertain he defaults to making himself smaller, keeping himself contained. 

“The rules’re no peeking, number one, and no touching cause I don’t want you cheating by tryin’ to feel, ya feel me?” 

Rhett can tell Link’s having too much fun with this, just from that. From the way he’s riffing off what he’s already said like he thinks he’s real funny. Link’s not the one about to sit here keeping his hands to himself while his best friend helps him sniff his underwear to see if he can’t smell the difference in how long they’ve been worn. Rhett hates himself for thinking that if somehow this game made it to air, they’d go off some permutation of _Can we smell the difference?_ and he’s sitting there trying to rhyme it or match it up with some 80’s song when Link repeats himself because he never got an answer.

“Do you understand, yes or no?”

Link’s tone is different here. It’s subtle, but it’s sharper, like being made to repeat himself has him annoyed, has him edging on towards stern. That’s not doing a damn sight to help the heat rising in Rhett’s body right now.

“No looking, no touching, no cheating. Got it,” Rhett manages with some difficulty, talking like his tongue is an obstacle in his mouth, too big to maneuver around.

“Alright. Here we go.”

There’s a crinkly plop on the coffee table right in front of Link, and a louder crinkling close enough to his face he reflexively leans back from it.

“How many pairs are we talking about here?” Rhett’s hand makes a move for the blindfold, but stops short. 

“Enough to get the point across,” Link says. He’s not moving. Is he watching Rhett? Does he see how affected he is? Can he see the pink skin peeking out around the green of the blindfold, color creeping down his neck? Rhett’s holding one hand in the other, nervous, fidgeting. It’s a damn rare sight. There’s no way Link isn’t drinking it in.

“Listen. I’ll let you know before each one. They’ve all got letters on ‘em. I’m not trying to trick or mess with you or anything like that. Just trying to lay this debate to rest once and for all. Deal?”

Rhett’s not sure why but he feels a twist of disappointment to hear that Link’s not trying to mess around with him about this, reads it as _he’s not trying to mess around_ when Rhett’s body has apparently already awoken to the distant, beyond remote possibility that this could turn into some _messing around,_ if the stars were aligned. If Link felt like he did. _If_. 

“Deal,” Rhett says finally, reminds himself to nod.

“Shake on it,” Link says, knuckles rapping lightly on Rhett’s worried hands to alert him to his presence. Rhett doesn’t think he’d ever made a deal like this, blind and at a disadvantage. But this is Link. He untangles his hands and reaches out and Link’s hand finds his, folds them together with the firm lock of his grip and a shake before letting him go. Rhett’s hand is sweaty but that’s nothing new, and Link doesn’t comment on it regardless.

“You ready for the first pair?”

“No, but sure.”

There’s some crinkling and then nothing. Rhett’s sitting silent and still, waiting and not quite sure just what’s about to happen. He’d thought Link would just open up the bag and let him smell it, but it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening. He’s about to open his mouth and ask about it when he feels something brush his nose and he flinches away with a startled noise. 

“Here’s underwear A. Hey, c’mon back, you can’t smell ‘em from back there…” 

“I thought you were gonna leave ‘em in the bags, I didn’t realize I was gonna have my nose up on your drawers, man,” Rhett grouses half-heartedly as he leans back in slowly, cautiously. Like there’s not a part of him that wants nothing more than exactly this. 

“I tested it, you can’t really tell with all the plastic bag smell in the way. This’ll work better. Trust me.”

Rhett should issue another complaint about the underwear hitting his nose, ask Link to keep them at a reasonable distance, but he doesn’t and the longer he doesn’t the more impossible it feels to do so. Besides, he’d be lying if he said half the allure of this whole thing is the possibility of _accidentally_ getting too close. Of inadvertently burying his face in Link’s scent. 

Rhett leans in again, arms folded up tight to his chest, elbows planted to his thighs, fingers laced. He looks so damn small for a man so large, and so earnest as he sniffs his way into the unknown. 

The cotton brushes his nose again and Rhett can’t help flinching a little, but doesn’t jump away. Instead, he stays close and sniffs. Nothing in particular is jumping out to him immediately. There’s nothing overpowering, it’s not strong by any means. He realizes suddenly he’s not really sure what he’s smelling for. The only experience he’s got smelling a man’s underwear is giving his own a sniff if there’s a question whether or not it’s clean. 

Rhett’s leaning in a little more, feels some part of the underwear tickling his beard, and he breathes in, trying not to get in his head about how he’s gotta look to Link who’s standing over him with some amount of underwear laid out in various levels of wear. He tries to focus in on just what he’s smelling, and there’s a hint of sweat maybe. He thinks he can smell his skin, warm and familiar and yet _not._ It’s a scent he’s never had the chance to smell, and his mind unhelpfully points out to him that this would be so much easier if he’d ever kissed his way down Link’s sweaty body, made his way south to the ‘harbor,’ cataloguing the scent and taste of him along the way. 

Rhett starts to panic like he thinks Link can read his mind, see in his silence and the hot red of his ears what he’s thinking, where his thoughts are headed. 

“Okay.” Gotta move this along, gotta get to the next one, gotta get this over with.

“What’s yer guess?” Link asks, pulling the underwear back. 

“Uh, I dunno. I gotta smell more before I can guess.”

“Knee jerk reaction, then.”

“I said I don’t know,” Rhett says, and in his mind he’d sounded annoyed but to his ears he sounds lost and foreign. Is that even his voice? He can’t remember it ever sounding like that. 

“Okay okay, fine. Here we go with B.”

Rhett doesn’t feel anything so he leans in just as Link was moving them in and feels the fabric against his nose and cheeks, and this time he doesn’t startle quite so easy. This time he just breathes in, dives in, rather than starting slow. 

Rhett thought this was gonna be easy, figured it’d be obvious. That after smelling more than one pair he’d be able to say with absolute certainty that one pair was rank and obviously had been worn multiple days, but that’s not what’s happening. This pair smells exactly the same as the first pair, so much so that he’s suspicious it’s exactly the same pair. That Link is, after all, trying to trick him. 

There’s the same scent of sweat and skin, and it’s subtle. Rhett thinks to himself he might re-wear these underwear too, if he were Link. Thinking that he might wear them himself, regardless how long they’d been worn, given the chance. Smelling them longer isn’t helping, but he’s not pulling back either, like he thinks if he lingers here, face buried in Link’s briefs, that a clue will come to him. 

After some time, seconds or minutes, Rhett couldn’t possibly know which, something occurs to him. It’s all subtle, sweat and scent, but it’s stale. However long these had been worn, they weren’t the most recent pair he’d taken off. They were a couple days old maybe, he doesn’t know. He wonders if that’s a clue, if that means these were worn for a day and the other pair for three or four, the length of time these had been off and zipped up in plastic. He can’t be sure, but that’s his guess. 

“Alright.”

“Whatchu thinking?” Link asks. He sounds different. Rhett’s not the only one starting to sound foreign, like his voice is long unused, like he’s re-learning to speak.

“These’re old.”

“Old?” Link asks for clarification, focusing the guess, figuring Rhett means (wrongly) that these have been worn for 3-4 days.

“You took ‘em off a few days back. They been sealed up. They smell stale.”

There’s silence there and Rhett doesn’t know if it’s good or bad, if he were right or wrong. Link’s playing his cards close to his chest, and it’s easier when Rhett can’t see him to call him out based on the look on his face. There’s no way Link could keep a poker face with him if he could see it. 

“How long they been worn?” Link asks finally. 

“I dunno. Maybe a day, maybe two. It’s hard to tell.”

“And the first ones?”

“I dunno, can we come back to them?”

“Sure,” Link says. There’s a soft crinkle as he picks up the next pair from the table in front of Rhett. 

“How many more?”

“Two,” Link says after a moment’s hesitation, like he’s wavering on what the right answer ought to be. Rhett doesn’t know what that means, why there was that moment of silence, but he doesn’t have long to think on it before he feels the drag of smooth cotton against his face again. 

“Here’s C.”

It occurs to him suddenly that he’s smelling the fronts. He can feel the seaming in the fabric that shapes the front drag against his nose as he leans in, tracing the shape downwards as he breathes in. He can’t help but think about what if Link were wearing them, what part of him would be beneath his nose? Would he be hard and twitching beneath his touch, under his nose and mouth as he follows the seam down?

Rhett’s hard in his jeans, more aware of his neglected need than he is about what he’s supposed to notice. He can smell Link alright, the heady scent of Link’s sweat, his skin and something else filling his nose. There’s a muskiness, there’s _sex_ filling his nostrils and for a panicked moment he can’t tell if he’s smelling it in Link’s discarded briefs or his own arousal on the air.

“How long?”

Rhett’s completely blindsided by the question. His brain jumps to interpret the question as _how long have you wanted this?_ and he’s frozen, can’t answer. It takes too long before he remembers what they’re doing, the game they’re playing. Rhett’s smelling Link’s underwear, seeing if he can tell how long they’ve been worn by how ripe they are or aren’t. It feels like his brain is moving molasses-slow, like the sensible parts of him are getting lost in the quicksand of arousal that’s harder to push aside like this. It’s easier to get lost in the dark, easier to disappear when he’s surrounded by Link, by his scent, by his voice coming from above him, making him feel small. 

“Days.” It’s not an answer, but it’s all his mind can churn out.

“Yeah, how many?”

Rhett can’t stop thinking about how this pair smells fresh, like they’d just come off of Link’s body. He wonders if he’d stripped out of them in the studio bathroom, wonders if he’d had a clean pair to put on. Is he wearing underwear now, or is he going commando? Is the scent of arousal he’s picking up from today or is it lingering from last night, this morning?

“Couple…”

“Be specific,” Link’s voice is a hard point of contact. It’s a lighthouse in the storm, and it’s keeping Rhett from getting more lost in this than he already is. Link pulls the underwear away from Rhett’s face.

“Three, maybe. Uhh. Yeah, three,” he stammers. 

“How come?”

“I don’t know.” Rhett’s voice is thick, affected. 

“Come on. You’ve gotta have a reason to say three, do they smell stronger or something?”

“Fresher.”

And again there’s a pause. Silence, like Link doesn’t know what to do with that. Or maybe he does, maybe it’s playing right into his hand.

“How does that figure into things?”

“Last ones were stale, couple days sealed up, these aren’t… just makes sense these been worn the whole time since the last ones.”

“So they’re not stinkier?”

“I guess not…” Rhett concedes. What had he been trying to prove with this whole thing anyway? Right now, he can’t remember.

“What about the first ones?” Link questions him.

“I dunno,” Rhett scrunches his nose a little, frustrated that that first pair doesn’t fit into his figuring about the last two.

“We’ll come back to ‘em,” Link says, and then he’s quiet again and so is Rhett. 

There’s a fourth pair coming and Rhett’s waiting for them, wondering just how long Link had been preparing for this. He’s trying to think back to the discussion that started it and how many days had passed. Four pairs at varying numbers of days doesn’t make sense, feels like too long to fit the passage of time, but math is hard right now and he’s harder. He’s so distracted he doesn’t notice that there’s no crinkling of a plastic baggie this time. 

“Here’s D. C’mon, lean in.” 

Rhett doesn’t question why Link isn’t bringing this pair of underwear closer when every other pair he’d apparently delighted in draping against his face. 

When Rhett leans in he gasps, finding more than just underwear, his nose bumping into the solid warmth of Link straining against the soft cotton. The balls it takes to make a move like this completely floors him. He wishes he could see the look on Link’s face, but he doesn’t dare for fear of breaking whatever spell got them this far. He wants to push it, see how much further Link will allow this to go. 

He wonders if Link’s as shocked they’re here as he is, if he’s swallowing down nerves or if he’s sure and certain somehow. In his mind’s eye, Link’s staring him down with a kind of steady confidence that makes Rhett feel safe and small, taking control of the situation, taking it where Rhett hadn’t known how to ask for it to go. 

The initial paralysis of shock starts to fade and the false anonymity of the blindfold makes him bold. The feeling of _if I can’t see you, you can’t see me_ guiding him to move, to give in to the desire to trace the seam down the front with his nose. He can smell the clean scent of the fabric softener that clings to all of Link’s clothes, more prominently in the morning before he’s been moving around and gotten the day all mixed in. He’d just put these underwear on fresh when he’d taken the last pair off. Nosing in close, he feels his previous guesses firming up like the hot bulge nudging his nose, his cheek. He’s breathing him in, the warm salt of his skin and the deep body scent of his arousal stronger now, the proof of it damp against his nose and cheek as he dares to nuzzle in. 

Rhett hears a sigh from above him, so soft he might have almost missed it, but with his sight blacked out everything else is heightened. 

Rhett knows now he hadn’t been alone in wanting, in feeling as though this little game was a thinly veiled excuse to find themselves in a vulnerable position. A playful way to break through that last wall that’s stood between them, kept them at arm's length. He wondered what Link would have done if they hadn’t been on the same page, if they’d started and he hadn’t reacted so obviously promising. Would he have stopped at three? That’s a question for later. 

The question for now is how much can he push, how much can he get. He’d won that soft sigh but he wants more. It’s not even a fully formed thought, just instinct. He’s gaining ground and searching for more, shifting so he’s exploring with his mouth instead of his nose. Still basking in the scent of his body, he’s exhaling warm, letting his breath ghost damply over his cock through the cotton briefs. What a picture he has to make like this, with his face buried in Link’s crotch like an animal or a whore. The sheer filthiness of it has him harder, hard enough he can’t help rub the heel of his hand down between his thighs. 

Lips parted, nose buried, he can practically taste him though his tongue hasn’t made contact, and he’s salivating for it. He earns a twitch of Link’s cock beneath his lips as it swells, waking to the barest brush of contact. The level of desperation in that responsiveness burns Rhett on contact, makes him desperate to strip himself and Link out of the confines of their clothes, to get his hands on Link properly. 

But he doesn’t, not yet. How he managed to stay seated and more or less obedient, leaning forward like a good boy is beyond him, beyond them both, but they’re both so wrapped up in the strange magic of what they’d created in this game, this excuse, that it’s inescapable. For now. 

But it starts to unravel. Rhett presses his tongue against the fabric and realizes that he’s tonguing his balls. Open mouthed, he tongues and kisses his way from root to tip where he finds the fabric damp already and salty for it. Rhett’s turning his face lazy-slowly this way and that, playing with the friction between them, with the way the cotton rubbed over his lips and the head of Link’s cock with his saliva and Link’s precum slicking the way. _That_ earns him more than a sigh, earns a groan that sounds like it was strangled out of him, like he’d tried and failed to keep it in. 

“How long?” 

Link’s voice is low and distracted, foreign to Rhett but he wishes it wasn’t. He wants to sear this tone of voice on his memory to recall again when he’s alone, wants the sound of his friend’s deep voice, thick with desire, to be as familiar as the rest of him. Wants this taste and scent of him to be as familiar as the way he slips back into his North Carolina accent when he’s excited or mad or tired.

They both know what Link’s really asking. The game is over and it’s hard to say who’d won, but Rhett’s long since forgotten the point he’d been trying to prove. He’s forgotten the rules, too, _no touching_ chief among them but they’d broken that rule before Rhett had nuzzled in, when Link kept the underwear on. 

It comes as no surprise then that there’s complaint when Rhett’s response isn’t an answer but another rules violation. An answer that came in fingers tangled up in waistband elastic, in tugging underwear that will certainly need to be changed after this down to his knees. Later, he’ll find words to erase the doubt, but for now his mouth finds a different way to answer. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for liking, commenting and subscribing. :)


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